The harvesting technique for whole tobacco plants has remained virtually unchanged since early colonial days. Typically, tobacco is planted in rows and the harvesting is done manually during the hot summer days of late August by workers using a hatchet-like knife with a handle about twelve inches long having a thin, sharp blade attached to one end. A stick about fifty inches long and one-inch square is stuck into the ground and a cone-shaped, sharp, metal spear is placed on the upper end of the stick. The worker stands near the stick and cuts each plant near the ground level with the knife. He then raises the plant to head height, then lowers it quickly to impale the stalk of the plant onto the spear at a point about six or seven inches above the butt of the plant. The stalk is then pushed down toward the bottom of the stick to make room for the next plant, and this operation is repeated until there are approximately one-half dozen plants on the stick, depending upon the size of the plants.
In cutting the plants from the ground, the worker must grasp the plant with one hand, cut the plant with the knife in the other hand, turn bodily toward the stick and impale the plant upon the spear. Since the worker is in a variety of locations and postures while making his harvesting cut, his relative position to the stick and its spear is constantly changing, making it difficult for him to accurately and consistantly bring the relatively thin stalk of the plant down upon the point of the spear. Frequently, the stick will tilt to one side due to wind or terrain inequalities. Moreover, unless the worker can consistantly push the plants down onto the stick in the same direction for each plant, he may unwittingly change the location of the stick. Obviously, such is a dangerous situation leading to potentially serious injury to the worker as he attempts to impale the plants onto the spear. Furthermore, there is always the danger of the worker injuring himself with the knife as he attempts to make the harvesting cut.
The plant-laden sticks remain in their original position throughout the day until, just before nightfall, the workers accumulate the plant-laden sticks into piles of about ten sticks per pile. This will protect the plants from overnight damage due to rain or wind and also allows the plants to wilt. The pressure from having the plants piled on top of one another flattens out the plants so that the thickness of each plant-laden stick becomes less, making it subsequently easier to handle in the curing barns. As is apparent, this accumulation of plant-laden sticks into piles is carried out after many hours of hard labor in the hot sun.
Before the workers begin the actual harvesting process, it is necessary to distribute the supply of sticks at strategic locations in the field of plants to be harvested. Each stick weighs approximately one pound, and the worker distributing the sticks in the field will generally begin the operation by lifting about fifty of the sticks onto his shoulder and then walking between the rows to drop one stick for each five or six plants to be harvested. This in itself can be a tedious and difficult job because typically, the terrain is not smooth, the leaves of plants generally overlap from row to row so that the worker cannot clearly see the uneven terrain on which he is walking, and many of the plants do not stand perfectly upright, all of which contribute to making the operation tedious and difficult.
While in certain instances vehicles have been used to carry the sticks and a team of two persons have been employed, one to drive the vehicle and one to deposit the sticks in their proper positions, such an operation risks serious damage to the plant leaves and thus is not desirable from this standpoint.
Hence, it is more than abundantly clear that there is and has been a striking, long felt need for improvements in harvesting method and apparatus for whole tobacco plants, and it is toward fulfillment of this need that the present invention is directed.